Plane Clock

Congratulations to Bates Smart Associate Johan Hermijanto for his success in the annual National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) competition to design the 2016 Architecture Commission.

Johan's proposal 'Plane Clock' was chosen from over 90 entries to receive a Jury Commendation.

Johan's submission proposed a trio of seemingly paper thin planes to interact with the garden's sculptures. These finely detailed structures align with the existing grid and capture the changing light of the garden to generate moments of activity and interaction. See Johan's proposal in the Gallery.

Call for great ideas

Urban regeneration or renewal is currently a significant driver of development in Sydney. From Barangaroo, already well underway, to Central To Eveleigh (C2E), Wentworth Point and Lachlan’s Line, there are significant opportunities to reinvent the city and position it for the future.

Government agency, Urbangrowth, recently conducted the 'Call for Great Ideas for the Bays Precinct', designed to tease out concepts for the future of this significant part of Sydney’s foreshore. The precinct consists of 95 hectares of government-owned land, 94 hectares of harbour waterways and sits within 2km of the central business district. It includes White Bay Power Station, Rozelle Rail Yards, White Bay and the Sydney Fish Markets.

Bates Smart was invited to join a consortium to participate in the Call for Great Ideas, led by Australand, now Frasers Property Australia.

In the spirit of collaboration, and in the interests of creating a diverse and multi-layered urban response, the multidisciplinary team included HDR, Candelapas Associates, Turner Studio, AECOM, McGregor Coxall, Atelier 10, WSP and Elton Consulting.

Together, the group identified several themes and opportunities including: best practice high-density living; potential to create new learning hubs; programmes for year-long activation of the precinct; and opportunities to extend the parameters of the precinct to achieve higher quality public domain outcomes.

The diversity of ideas generated demonstrates the benefit of approaching a large precinct, consisting of a number of disparate elements, in a multidisciplinary way that encouraged a range of responses.

For the competition phase of the Embassy project, Bates Smart took advantage of the new technology provided by virtual reality goggles.

This technology generates an immersive 3D experience, and is beneficial for architects in enabling clients to better understand the scale, volume and context of potential buildings. It can impart a heightened awareness over and above that conveyed by traditional 2D methods, and enables clients and other viewers to more fully appreciate the spatial dimensions and orientation of the plan.

The goggles also offer an exciting and novel experience. In addition to gaining a heightened appreciation for the ambiance and finishes of the internal spaces, viewers can be virtually transported to a spot outside the building where they can comprehend both its scale and relationship to the surrounding streetscape and environment.

"There’s a huge future for using timber for its natural curative properties. It’s soothing, it’s reassuring, it’s tactile and people relate to it, just like they relate to having a garden. If you put someone into a concrete box and asked them how they were feeling – or measured how they were feeling – and then put them into a garden courtyard with timber, plants and trees you’d get a completely different response. We all know that, because we all experience that feeling and we’re all human because we come from the same DNA, so basically it’s proven as an irrefutable fact. It becomes the natural material for use in healthcare, and is now the go-to material for similar projects."

Dandenong Mental Health won the AIA National Award for Public Architecture in 2014 along with the Australian Timber Design Awards, Overall Award for Timber Design. The project is a joint venture between Bates Smart and Group GSA.

Design win at Sydney Olympic Park The facade unites the building to read as a composition of forms

“This is a complex building with multiple uses expressed in a simple form ”

Guy Lake

Director

Bates Smart, with long term client Ecove, recently won a design based tender for a mixed use development at Sydney Olympic Park.

Bates Smart Director Guy Lake comments on the team's approach:

"Our design for the project is expressed as three interlocking objects, representing the primary uses on the site: a slender residential tower with views spanning from Homebush to the city; active ground level uses including a licenced club and retail below a parking podium; and a sustainable office headquarters for Sydney Olympic Park Authority."

The facade approach unifies the building composition through a combination of terracotta, glass and aluminium panels. The tower is expressed a serires of stacked multi-storey volumes, and wrapped in glass and silver metal to project a shimmering skin. By using a façade that blurs the boundary of the office space and the parking, the podium design enhances the identity of the office while suppressing the identity of the above ground parking. The façade uses terracotta and glass in alternating panels of varying width to seamlessly transition from a more solid facade that visually conceals the cars to an open facade that provides natural light and outlook to the office space.

There is a growing commitment globally to a sustainable vertical urbanism that is conceptualised in relation to cities as a whole.

Bates Smart believes that in order to achieve sustainable development our buildings must be attuned to local climates, cultures, contexts and technologies. To find out more about Bates Smarts latest high-rise and super-tall projects read our latest publication Tall Buildings

A minimalist Lighthouse for the Modern Age

'Through open voids in the structure the topography of the site spills through the house and falls away towards the ocean.' This is the Container House - an elegant proposal by a trio of talented Bates Smart graduates.

The scheme won an Honorable Mention in the international Architectural Competition Concours d'Architecture [AC-CA]Container Vacation House competition.

Bates Smart Director Philip Vivian commented: 'This is an an outstanding result from a young team in their first international open competition.'

“177 demonstrates that with innovative design, tall buildings can enhance the amenity of the city ”

Philip Vivian

Director, Bates Smart

The recently completed 177 Pacific Highway demonstrates that tall buildings can be built in dense urban environments without sacrificing public amenity and particularly access to sunlight.

At 31 storeys the building reaches to the maximum height limit in North Sydney of 195 metres. Through detailed solar analysis, innovative design thinking and engineering, the project team unlocked the sites’ development potential for a major commercial office building, and created a new type of public space for the city, while maintaining legislated solar access.

Design Director Philip Vivian comments: “Overshadowing prohibitions have effectively prevented new high rises in North Sydney for nearly two decades. Much of the debate about tall buildings has been around their height but the concern should be focused on public amenity rather than height.

"Our aim for 177 was to demonstrate that tall buildings can be built in dense urban environments without impacting on the public amenity of the city. The design of 177 achieves zero overshadowing of nearby public spaces in mid winter, thus maintaining the pleasantness of those spaces.”

To compensate for minor overshadowing at the Equinoxes the base of the building has been raised to create a major public garden plaza that can be used all year round, utilising convection cooling to maintain a temperate climate in summer, while solar heat gain will warm it in winter.

This wintergarden typology is rarely used in Australia. In addition to cafes and a restaurant, the Garden Plaza is planted with Australian native trees with places for people to sit and enjoy the sun.

Bates Smart are shortlisted in the International Design Competition for a 380m supertall tower in Kuala Lumpur International Financial District (KLIFD) alongside Foster + Partners and SOM.

Design director Philip Vivian commented; 'The design elegantly tapers to create an omnidirectional profile on the skyline; its warm, soft, glassy image theatrically playing with the Petronas Towers to create a uniquely Malaysian skyline. The building's timeless design will be attractive and adaptable to the needs of tenants through the next century.'

The proposed tower, designed to be the second tallest tower in Malaysia, will anchor the new financial district currently under construction in downtown Kuala Lumpur.

The limited international competition was held by Pertubuhan Akitek Malaysia and 1 Malaysia Development Berhad under the auspices of the International Union of Architects.

Warm, tactile, renewable and enduring, the material qualities of timber are palpable. In both pure and hybrid structures, engineered timber has the potential to create high performance buildings that reduce the carbon footprint of our cities and feel good to live and work in.

In this issue of Journal we celebrate this enduring material in both natural and engineered forms; its nascent qualities and the potential for our future built environment through a selection of our built and unbuilt work.